


Army of the Chosen Dead

by illumynare



Series: Destiny Drabbles & Ficlets [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Gen, Owl Sector
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-10-16 06:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10565919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare
Summary: "Shake it off. We've all been dead before."An attempt to fill25 promptswith ficlets about Guardians, both canon and my OCs.





	1. Not Sleeping (Eris/Toland)

Before the Pit, Eris seldom sleeps.

It’s a Hunter trait, and no surprise to anyone. But she also does not dream. The nightmares, the echoes of lost memory, the whispers and the teeth that haunt the sleep of other Hunters—they do not touch her. She naps in silent peace, and wakes at the slightest sound. Stretches, and blinks at the darkness, and feels content to sit and keep watch a while, her Ghost nestled on her shoulder.

Sleep claims Toland like a dark, sticky ooze; it pulls him under, tendrils wrapping around his limbs, stopping up his nose and mouth until he can only make the muffled, snuffling noise too soft to be called snoring. He fights it as long as he can, shuffling from books to instruments to the bones of a Hive Knight, until at last he tips over, lays his head against the table, and sleeps. 

Eris watches him sometimes. His face is softer than when he is awake, but his skin seems somehow more translucent, and the veins stand out with uncanny darkness. Sometimes she imagines another darkness coiling beneath his skin, sleep mutated into a power awake and hungry.

(Sometimes, Eris thinks, Hunter watchfulness is more trouble than it’s worth.)

#

After the Pit—after Oryx—Eris sleeps.

It’s a strange luxury. But the whispers are silent now. Her vengeance is achieved. If she lies still, if she closes her three eyes, if she listens to the beating of her heart—such a single, strangely human sound—then slowly, slowly darkness wells up out of her bones and seeps through her brain. And she sleeps.

She dreams, sometimes, of the Hive shrieking as they fall to the Guardian; of the silence after Omnigul's last scream. But there is no terror in her dreaming. She has suffered the living gaze of Crota, and felt the Deathsinger liturgy flay her mind open, and after those living nightmares, the tattered memories in the confines of her own mind are not terrible.

She wakes slowly, and lies drowsing in her bed. It’s a luxury she can allow herself now.

Sometimes, she does not wake alone.

Toland is all shadow now—none of his former unsettling paleness—with three emerald gleams for eyes. His fingertips rest against her neck, as if he had been feeling for a pulse.

"Such a dull way of spending time, dearest."

“Can you sleep, in that form?” she asks curiously.

He draws himself up haughtily, tucking hands under elbows. "Had you followed me, you would know that in Ascendant spaces there are no such petty distinctions. I have walked in the living dreams of Ir Yût, and seen the realms alive with the thoughts of Savathûn, and lo, if I close my eyes I only wake to further glories—"

Eris cuts him off with a yawn, spitefully calm.

"If you're lonely," she says, "you can stay."

She falls back asleep to the lullaby of his disgruntled muttering.


	2. Sunlight (Eris)

When her Ghost first raises her, it is the pale hour just past dawn. Cold blue light shines through the dusty windows, picking out motes of dust in the air, casting shadows from the skeletons around her. Eris blinks, and brushes little finger bones off her lap, and thinks with a sort of dazed terror, _What is this?_

#

The sun is high overhead, and beats hot against her helmet. Eris has lain hidden among the lavender bushes for an hour, and still the Fallen have not moved from their place in the crumbling ruin. Slowly, carefully, she pulls the helmet off her head. Blinks, because the raw sunlight is so much brighter than the filtered display of her visor. The drone of the bumblebees fills her ears.

Eris does not grow sleepy. She is a Hunter down to her bones, and she has a mission, so she will not sleep until she has confirmation that the Devil Baron is here. But as the sun beats down on the nape of her neck and the coils of her hair, as the bees sing to themselves around her, something in her spine loosens, and she thinks suddenly of how glad she is, that her Ghost gave her breath again.

#

Eriana-3 saves her life at the Mare Imbrium—Eriana, late-arrived to the battlefield, Solar light blazing around her body as she casts grenade after grenade, as wholly luminescent as the Sun.

Eris—crouched in the shadow of a rock, cloaked in stealth, clutching a knife because she has no other weapon left—stares at her and thinks, _If I could only be so brave._

#

_If I could only be so brave,_ she thinks, as she watches Eriana’s glory blaze before the Oversoul throne, and then go out.

But she is not, and so she lives.

#

The sunlight hurts her, after. The eyes she has made her own cannot bear the light; they must be wrapped in gauze. The darkness dripping down her face _itches_ whenever sunlight touches it.

But in this, at least, Eris is brave: when the sun hangs low in the sky, sometimes she leaves her shadowed corner. She walks out along the walls of the Tower—there is a spot where a Guardian keeps potted lavender; she lingers by the scent—and she breathes the air, and watches the gentle gleam of the City, and remembers her Ghost. And she is glad, still, for that pale morning light among the skeletons.


	3. "I didn't agree to this" (Fireteam Radiant Void)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I HAVE A SURPRISING NUMBER OF FEELINGS ABOUT MY BABIES AND THE CRUCIBLE.

"I didn't agree to this," Reina mutters.

Afternoon sunlight slants through the windows of the ruined house. There are five other Guardians with her, guns gleaming, but she still doesn't feel safe.

Charis wrinkles her nose and huffs at the strand of loose hair hanging down her face. "You made a bet with me," she says, fingers busy as she ties back her hair. "You should have _known_ what would happen."

"I mean . . . being a Guardian." Reina peeks out the window at the grassy corridor between buildings. She knows she shouldn't be afraid, but there's still a cold weight burning in her stomach.

"You didn't agree to that either. Ghost just found you." Charis snaps her helmet in place over her head. "Calm _down._ It's just a Control match. It's going to be fun."

"I _mean—"_ Reina bites back the words. She doesn't want to have an argument right now.

_I didn't agree to kill Guardians. That's not why I came to the Tower._

Arete, her Ghost, bumps against her shoulder. "You're going to be spectacular," she says warmly.

Charis bumps her other shoulder. "Just not as spectacular as me."

"I will not raise you more than once," says Charis's Ghost (Reina refuses to believe that his name is really "Sugarpuff") in the flat, mechanical voice he always uses.

"Not gonna need it," says Charis, in the smug voice that _she_ always uses.

Then her head tilts as she looks at Reina, and her face is hidden by the helmet, but still—Reina feels like there's understanding there.

Maybe.

 _I'd advise you to try the Crucible,_ Ikora had said to her when she arrived at the Tower, and that was almost enough to make Reina do it then and there—but she couldn't quite bring herself to—well, and then Charis happened.

It's not the dying that scares her. She's died before, what, fifteen times now?

With a strange pang, Reina realizes that she's no longer sure. She thought, when she was first raised, when she first understood what had happened and would _keep_ happening, that she'd surely remember every time. But now the deaths blur together, and she can't quite count them even when she tries.

Reina has even died by a Guardian's hand before. Twice, both Charis. The time she was writhing around the stone blade of a Knight. And the time she and Charis sat up under the stars talking about the Traveller. But both of those times had been—

—well, the second time certainly hadn't been _necessary_ , but it had happened in the moment, because of what she'd said. There hadn't been this _waiting_. This knowing that not now, but soon (Reina has no illusions about her skills) she will die to another Guardian.

She's embracing the Void already. She started even before she realized she was afraid. It's half of the cold pooling in her stomach; it shivers along her skin like a fever, it slides down her spine.

Shadows grow darker, light brighter. Voices echo.

Too later, Reina realizes that Charis is speaking; she turns to her just as Shaxx's voice booms over the open channel: " _Time to fight, Guardians!"_

Charis is out of the ruined building before Shaxx has even finished speaking, bolting from cover to cover as fast as if she's dodging a pair of Hive Shriekers. Reina follows, and usually she can't match Charis for speed, but fear and the Void are locked together in her now, quicksilver in her limbs, and she eats up the space between them until they're side by side.

She knows where they're going. B flag is key to a match, Charis told her this. And Reina knows what to expect—Charis told her, over and over, and a distant, calm part of her mind makes a note to thank her when this is over—

But when Reina sees the other team clustered around the flag in the courtyard, all thought and strategy leaves her.

She is.

They are.

And she unleashes the Void in a terrible, beautiful surge. There aren't words for the song of the Nova Bomb leaving her, the purity of its arc as it eats through the air. Then it lands thunderously—and this is the nature of the Void, that it is exalted power and ravenous hunger at once. Reina's Nova Bomb consumes the enemy team, vaporizes flesh and bone and steel, and she feels the power of their Light surging into her.

_The equations balance thus: you are diminished, and I am exalted. You are broken, and I am made strong._

"Or," says Charis, "you could just eliminate the entire team in one go. Good job. But . . . cheating."

Reina blinks at her. The world still feels hollow and echoing; there's a loud drumming, and she realizes it's her own heart.

"Cheating?" she echoes stupidly.

"You have to empty your Light before a match, I _told_ you. No using supers at the start."

"Oh," says Reina, and then realizes what she's done. "Oh _no."_

Cheating. Her face heats with shame—she'll have to tell Shaxx, though he must already know—and Ikora, who was so proud of her—

They'll probably never let her in the Crucible again.

She hadn't realized how badly she'd wanted to do well here, until now.

"If you shoot me," she says dully, "does that make it—can you still win? If I'm not on the team. Artete doesn't have to raise me until after the match."

"Oh, _by the Taveller."_ Charis smacks a hand against her helmet. "It's not _that_ important. Do you know how many tricks people try in here?"

"I—I need to find Shaxx," she says, but Charis seizes her arm and sits down heavily, dragging Reina with her.

"We'll just sit here," says Charis, "and let them kill us. That's fair, right? And then we can win the match."

"But—you didn't cheat."

"Not _this_ time."

"Please don't tell me."

Reina flexes her hand. The shame is still heavy and sour in her gut. The fear is still skittering along her nerves. But—Charis is slouched against her now, head resting on her shoulder.

They're sitting undefended at the central battleground of the match, but she still feels safer than she did at the start.

Charis's hand finds hers. Squeezes her fingers, and Reina squeezes back.

Then she catches a glimpse of approaching Guardians, and her heart skips a beat.

"I did _not_ agree to this," Charis mutters, and Reina laughs just as the grenades hit them.


	4. Not Dead (Fireteam Heartbreak)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for vomit. BASED ON A TRUE STORY.

The plague hits Vanguard University on a Monday morning two weeks before midterms. Eris is already living a five-hours-of-sleep-is-good life, so when she drags herself into American History II at 8 AM, she hardly notices that a good third of her fellow students are missing.

She doesn’t know anybody in the class, and she doesn’t chat much with strangers, so it’s not until 11:30 that she finds out, when she meets Eriana for lunch.

“Stomach bug,” says Eriana, and hands her a multivitamin. “Half of New Monarchy was vomiting all last night.” 

Eris thinks of the huge, fancy new dorm that nobody calls by its actual name. Somehow the plague seems more threatening because it’s starting _there,_ and not somewhere like the old ramshackle Palamon Dorm, where half the residents are grad students and somebody is currently keeping a goat on the roof.   

Wei and Omar and Vell all come down with the plague on that first day. Sai stays healthy, which is a wonder considering her sleep schedule—but she’s been locking herself in the art building so much, she must not have had a chance to get infected.

Eris and Eriana keep to themselves in their dorm room. They take their vitamins, use Purell, and get eight hours of sleep. Three days later, they’re still healthy, and Eris finally starts to think they might escape.

One thing worries her: she hasn’t seen Toland since the plague started. That’s not unusual, but he also hasn’t emailed her, and it’s rare that he manages to go three days without at least forwarding her links to conspiracy theories about the Tunguska Event, or articles on Proto-Indo-European philology.

Eris has often thought that Toland is the most likely of them to survive a nuclear winter—there’s something cockroach-like in the way he scuttles away after seizing extra muffins from the cafeteria—but he also doesn’t have a roommate this semester. He is probably not dead, but after three days, she thinks that perhaps she should check on him.

His door is unbolted, so Eris pushes it open and is treated to the sight of Toland gagging over the sink.

Without even looking up, he says, “I am not sick.”

Eris was about to flee, but she pauses. “Oh?”

“I am perfectly fine,” says Toland. “This is just a momentary upset.” He swallows, face twisting briefly. “My immune system is _superb_.”

“You live on fish sticks and jello,” says Eris. Though, from the state of his room, he’s been living on pudding cups. It’s entirely possible this moment has nothing to do with the plague, and everything to do with his terrible dietary choices.

“I am not sick,” Toland insists, right before he vomits in the sink. 

Eris sighs, and goes to help him, and only much later realizes that this is the moment she started loving him.


	5. Not Dead (Reina)

Rising was like this:

Darkness. First there was only utter darkness.

Then came a starburst that flowered across the void, unfurling itself into a pattern of dizzying complexity, rippling with a meaning just barely beyond comprehension.

In the next moment, Reina existed; she felt Light dancing along her ribs and shivering down her spine, locking her back into a human body.

She shuddered and drew breath. Opened her eyes.

Arete hovered above her, pieces drawn together with concern. "You're all right!" she said, but the cheer was forced.

It took a moment for Reina to get her tongue working. To get her memories working.

They had been out on patrol in the Cosmodrome, but there were no enemies to be found. They had made camp and started a fire. They had sat up together, Charis resting her head against Reina's shoulder, and talked of everything and nothing.

And then Charis had flinched away, and pulled out her shotgun.

Charis had killed Reina once before. When she had been impaled on the sword of a Hive Kight, and the Knight was dead but his blade was still wedged between her ribs, and her flesh shuddered and tried to heal against the raw edge of the blade but _couldn't_ , and she screamed until she didn't have breath left for screaming—

Reina pushed the memory away. That was then. This was now.

And right _now,_ Charis had shot her for no reason she could understand.

Reina clambered to her feet. The world swam about her for a moment—and then she saw a lock of white hair, just barely visible from behind a rock.

Slowly, she approached.

Charis sat leaning against the rock, shotgun disassembled in her lap as she cleaned it. Her pale blue hands moved quickly and surely, and she did not look up.

Reina tried to think of a good way to ask, _Why did you shoot me?_ But that sounded like an accusation, and she wasn't exactly angry, even though it had hurt.

_Did I say something wrong?_ But obviously she _had_ said something wrong, because she certainly hadn't _done_ anything. Unless Charis had been angry for a while now?

_Everybody said you would shoot me someday._ But Reina couldn't bring herself to repeat Tower gossip, even if had turned out to be true—

"What do you want?" Charis demanded, looking up.Her golden eyes were very bright in the darkness, and for a moment she looked just as frighteningly alien as when they'd met.

"Why did you shoot me?" Reina blurted out.

"Felt like it." Charis looked back at her shotgun and started snapping it back together.

Arete materialized in a little swirl of light. "Oh no _no,_ you do not get to say that to your _fireteam leader_ —"

Reina saw the tightening in Charis's shoulders, and she held up a hand to her Ghost. "Arete, no."

"But she—"

"Let us talk. Please?"

With a huff, Arete swirled away again.

"I'm not angry," said Reina. "I just want to know why."

The next moment Charis was on her feet, rigid with fury. "You called the Traveler evil, and _you don't know why I'd shoot you?_ "

"I didn't—" Reina paused, running over their conversation over again inher head. "Well, I mentioned it as a theory. There's currently no way to verify that the Traveler's purposes—"

"You felt the Light wake you. You heard the Traveler's song call you back from death. And you think that could be evil?"

"But since we were made by the Traveler, our subjective experience is not—"

Reina broke off. She had much more to say: that Pujari's vision was not lightly set aside. That there were too many gaps in the records of the Golden Age. That even if the Traveler wasn't evil, it might see humanity less as children than as cattle, to be raised and slaughtered for unknown purposes.

It was not a problem that worried her much, when the Hive and the Fallen were so near. But she did think about it sometimes. She had looked at the pale curve of the Traveler hanging over the City and wondered if someday she would be called upon to destroy either one or the other. She had asked Arete, _Will you help me protect the City, if that time comes?_ and Arete had said, _Yes._

But that time wasn't now.

Right now, she realized that Charis wasn't just angry, but _hurting_.

How could she make this right without lying?

"Well." Charis shrugged. "Now you know why you don't want me on your fireteam. See you back at the Tower." She turned away. "Or not."

"Wait—" Reina grabbed at her shoulder.

In a heartbeat, Charis had her shotgun pressed against the base of Reina's throat. "I don't keep peace with those who hate the Traveler."

It felt like Reina's body kept trying to flinch in preparation for the shot.

"I don't hate the Traveler," she said.

She doubted it sometimes. She would fight it if she had to. But she couldn't hate the power that gave her and Charis and all the Guardians breath.

"And without you, there isn't a fireteam, so I can't throw you off it." She swallowed, looking down the barrel into the eyes of the first friend she'd ever had. "Please stay. And don't shoot me. Again."

The silence stretched between them.

Then Charis lowered the shotgun.

"Sorry," she muttered.

"What's the song?" asked Reina.

"What?" Charis looked startled.

"You said the Traveler sings to you." Reina hoped that for once her face and her voice were not betraying her, that her curiosity and respect were clear. "I've never heard that song. It's relevant data. So . . . tell me, please?"

For another moment, Charis stared at her. Then she said slowly, "It's not exactly a song. Not like Humans sing."

Reina sat down. Charis sat down beside her, leaned into her, and Reina put an arm over her shoulders.

Very quietly, Charis went on, "It's the Light. It's . . . resonant. It _is_ the song."

Reina closed her eyes listened to her friend.


	6. Going Undercover (Ikora)

Ikora Rey has never been much of a one for stealth. She'd rather let her shotgun close any watching eyes. Her philosophy is that you're completely invisible once everyone around you is dead.

But somebody in the Crucible had been taking bribes to throw matches. There isn't enough evidence for the Vanguard to take action, but when Shaxx comes to her with the name of a bar, when he rumbles, _I trust your Light and your wits, Guardian_ —well.

It's not the sort of bounty that she's used to taking from him, but Ikora Rey has never backed down from a challenge.

That's how she finds herself slouching over a tin cup filled with vodka, a headscarf wrapped around her head, fringe drooping low over her eyes. Her Light is tamped down as far as possible—she won't be able to summon Axion Bolts worth a damn, and a Nova Bomb is clean out of the question, but no Guardian will sense her light without getting in range of her shotgun

Ikora doesn't worry about anything that's in range of her shotgun.

She does worry about looking mortal for long enough to catch this cheating Guardian.

The Suros representative is still sitting alone at his table. Ikora eases a glance around the bar, keeping her eyelids low, movements fluid.

Halfway through the her scan of the room, her gaze lands on a cluster of students seated together. (She guesses that's what they are, from the thick books piled around them.)At the same time, one of them looks up.

Their eyes meet.

He's twenty at most, tall and scrawny, with brown skin and a shock of ink-black hair. His dark eyes widen instantly, and he makes a quick, abortive gesture, knocking over his glass.

"Shun?" says the girl sitting next to him, at the same time that the boy beside him wails, "Traveler's _cleft,_ my _notes,"_ and grabs a napkin.

But the student—Shun—is still staring at Ikora, and with a sort of idle amusement, she stares back, watching his flush grow deeper. Are the children of the city so bashful, these days?

Something moves in the corner of her eye. Ikora turns, and sees an Awoken striding between tables, his faded cloak still too like a Hunter's cloak, the swell of his Light too poorly-hidden for her Warlock senses.

The culprit sits down by the Suros representative and they start to talk in low voices.

Ikora rises smoothly from her seat, fingers quietly finding Invective.

She doesn't look back at Shun as she strides toward her prey. If he's still watching, well, then he'll get a show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in the same continuity as my story [Glory 0.1](http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/18847999); Shun recognizes Ikora because he's watched every one of her Crucible matches 15 times.
> 
> This fic was inspired by the card [Ghost Fragment: The City Age 2](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-the-city-age-2), and also by a tumblr post that I now _cannot_ find, which speculated that Ikora might have actually first been taught intrigue and spying by Shaxx.


	7. Breaking Glass (Owl Sector)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a direct sequel to [this ficlet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10565919/chapters/24373791).

"Well," said Quist, with a sort of dazed calm, "I suppose that was a valuable lesson."

"I think I'm going to throw up," said Berriole, eyes squeezed shut. She took a few deep breaths. "Maybe not."

The bar was in the kind of shambles that could be expected when two Guardians had a violent disagreement. The blood, at least, was gone—transmatted by the unfortunate's Guardian's Ghost when it raised him, right before Ikora Rey took his weapons and dragged him out with her. But there were still broken glasses, overturned furniture, and shocked patrons everywhere.

The three students were crouched being their overturned table. Quist had managed to stack the fallen books, and he was trying to gather up his loose-leaf notes, but his hands kept shaking and slipping. Berriole was hunched in on herself, while Shun held a broken shot-glass, running his thumb over the jagged edges.

"What kind of lesson?" asked Shun.

"Guardians," Quist said flatly, "are bad news. And why are you playing with broken glass?"

"She broke it with her head," said Shun.

"Yes! Right before she _painted his brains across the wall_ with her shotgun!"

Berriole made an unhappy noise and took some more slow breaths.

"C'mon, that was _Ikora Rey,"_ said Shun. "Am I the only one excited about this?"

"Yes," said Quist. He slapped the last of his notes into a stack. "We should go." 

"Already?" asked Shun.

"Well, they clearly aren't going to bring our fried plantains _now,"_ Quist snapped.

"You never know," said Shun. His smile was a little off-center. "It's a very, um . . ." He trailed off, losing whatever joke he'd been about to make.

"Do we need to tell the authorities what happened?" asked Berriole, determinedly focused on the practicalities.

"The bartender can do that," said Quist. "We should go."

Shun did not say anything.

Shun was staring again at the broken shot-glass, still running his thumb over the edge. There had been a smudge of blood on it once, now absorbed by his skin. Ikora Rey's blood, the blood of a Guardian raised by the Traveler, who fought like a whirlwind in the Crucible but who also protected the Last City from the Darkness. Who had helped raise its walls.

When the other Guardian threw her back, when her head slammed into their table, her eyes had stared up a moment into his. Dark, beautiful eyes—but that didn't matter. What mattered was the dazed pain in her face. And it was lost a moment later as she pulled herself up and leapt back into the fight, but it had been real.

Shun Li had watched a hundred Crucible matches, had seen Guardians stabbed and shot and vaporized and burnt. But now, as he grasped that glass that Ikora Rey had broken with her head, he thought: _they can bleed._

And that was the first time that he wanted to protect them.


	8. Welcome Home (Mara Sov)

****Deep in the Reef, nestled among the the pipes and the corridors and the chambers, is a domed garden filled with five-pointed flowers.

* * *

His name is Uldren and hers is Mara, and they are nothing but children. Their mother is a Corsair, their father—uncommonly accomplished for his sex—an architect. Neither has much time for the minding of their offspring, and so Mara and Uldren play in the garden alone together. 

Uldren is the older, twelve years to her ten, and he would burn worlds for her, crush stars for her. But that is not needful. He hides while she counts, and when she finds him, he laughs and bows his head, and she kisses his forehead.

* * *

He is fourteen and she is twelve and the Queen is dead. The Queen is dead, and the Techeun Witches come to their family's door, say they have felt songs through the void and Mara is fit to face the trials. To become truly Awoken, and perhaps their queen.

Nine out of ten who face that trial die. Uldren screams at them in fury, and lies twitching on the ground after the shock-blast, and watches them lead Mara away.

 _I think the stars are singing, Brother,_ she said to him once, and he remembers that as he hopes, hopes, _believes_ she will survive the trials.

* * *

Mara Sov is Queen of the Awoken. Any family she had in her life before is forgotten.

For one Corsair and one architect, that is enough.

For Uldren, it is not.

No male has ever joined the Royal Awoken Guard. Few have ever joined the Royal Army. Uldren grimly sets himself to the first of many impossible tasks. He sweats and gasps and bleeds his way through training, and when half his fellow recruits have been eliminated, he stands stall to enter the Royal Army.

Queen Mara stands above them, briefly, as she listens to their oaths of loyalty.

* * *

Next is the Royal Awoken Guard, he tells himself. Next is the chance to prove himself worthy to protect her.

But first: Mars.

First, they fight the Fallen, and when Uldren is shot down, he barely pulls himself out of the wreckage alive. He means to walk straight to the rendezvous, but there's a song on the wind of Mars, a subaudible vibration that raises the hairs on the back of his neck, the same way as when Mara stared at the stars and hummed. 

He follows it: that song of the stars, that prickle in his skin, that aching, sinking shadow.

That's how he finds the Black Garden.

He follows the song, and he finds the Garden, and that is what brings him back to her.

* * *

"It has served us well," says Queen Mara, staring down at him from her throne, after listening to his story. "Let it be Awoken."

So the Techeun Witches take him to their secret places. They bring him to the edge of death, but he does not die. He sees the vision of the lady, and she smiles as she says to him, _We are a beautiful creation, and we must keep ourselves very safe._

It's a fool's speech. Uldren has always meant to keep Mara safe. No other secret has ever mattered.

But the vision lifts her lashes, widens her eyes, reveals galaxies and chasms and starlight to him.

(Starlight becomes his mother, and his father is the hungry, loyal dark.)

When the Techeuns bring him back to the Queen, his soul doubled and yet still faithful, he bows to her.

Mara says, "He has served us well," and he thrills at the pronoun reserved for the truly Awoken.

Then she leans down, and presses her lips to his forehead. "Welcome home," she says, "brother."

* * *

His name is Uldren and hers is Mara, and he would burn worlds for her, crush stars for her. But sometimes all that is needful is for him to walk in a certain garden with his queen, and lay a crown of five-pointed flowers on her head.


	9. Thunderstorm (Fireteam Radiant Void)

The heavy banks of clouds were dark on the horizon, but overhead the sky was bright, burnished blue. Reina knelt in the familiar Warlock meditation posture and squinted against the dazzling sunlight as she looked up into the air where Isolde floated, practicing the Dawnblade.

Wreathed in the golden light, Isolde looked almost like a second sun. Even from a distance, Reina could feel the wave of heat each time one of her flaming swords crashed down onto the ground. With each sword, she could also feel a wave of Light. It was familiar—the song of Solar energy, the peculiar modulation of Isolde's Light. But there was a subtle change: the song was brighter now, sharper but also sweeter.

They'd all changed, facing Oryx. Charis walked more heavily now that she carried the Nightstalker's bow. Madrigal-9 volunteered to play with the children of the City, and stared at them with a new sadness flickering in her throat. Gavin no longer complained about having to serve the Traveler. Reina woke from dreams of Arc energy coursing through her bones, and Ikora Rey's words echoing in her brain: _What does it mean to be a Warlock? Power._

And Jason—

Beside her, Jason sat cross-legged, leaning back on his hands. Reina couldn't help glancing at him, before she reminded herself she was here to train Isolde. 

She had promised Ikora.

Reina looked back up. Watched the way Isolde wove the Light to her will, hands confident upon the swords. Though she was wreathed in flame, Reina could still see her smile.

Isolde was very different from the silent, terrified Guardian whom Reina had found hiding in the Warlock archives two years ago. As she drifted down to the ground, her face was radiant—more so than it had ever been in actual Radiance.

They had all been changed by Oryx. Isolde seemed to be the only one for whom the change had been entirely good.

Then Isolde's feet touched the earth. She still smiled, but now a little of the old fear weighted her shoulders as she walked toward them.

This, at least, Reina could deal with.

"Excellent work," she said, rising to meet her.

Isolde smiled, a little shyly. Hesitantly. She could never quite stop being awkward around Reina, but Reina could never quite stop being awkward around anyone. In that way, Isolde was a comfort, sometimes.

"I can't, uh. The resonance was a little off." Isolde shifted slightly. "Sorry?"

"It's fine," said Reina, and pulled her into a hug. Isolde fitted neatly against her, nose against collarbone, crown of her head beneath her chin. She was still—always—stiff for the first moment of the embrace, and then she relaxed against Reina, snuggling into her.

_Still, always, Reina remembered when they were on the Dreadnaught, facing the Warpriest. All three glyph stones were burned away, everyone was dead except for Reina, and she was staggering under the darts thrown by a Taken Captain—_

_Until Isolde self-resurrected in a golden cascade, slapped her palm to Reina's throat and burned her to death, then raised her in the next moment—ruthless but needful: there was no time even for Ghost-hastened healing—and then flung fusion grenade after fusion grenade upon the Warpriest, while Reina raised the rest of their fireteam._

"You're fine," she whispered into Isolde's hair, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. There were more things she wanted to say: _You're good, you are very good, I will_ never _punish you._ But she'd said them already. She had to trust that Isolde had believed her.

For a little while, they clung together.

* * *

They did not go back to the City that night.

The storm was bearing down upon them—fat drops of rain pattered over them as they made camp in the shelter of a rocky overhang—and Isolde, though she had been a Warlock for eight years, was new to the Dawnblade. This form of the Light was still too near and close to her; it sparked behind her elbows and in her jaw as she moved. Reina, herself a novice at the Warlock arts, knew they should not go back to the City yet. That was how terrifying, regrettable accidents were made.

So they made camp. Isolde was cuddled up against Reina, mouth half-open as she made soft, cat-like snores.

Beside her, Jason sat in silence. He'd hardly said a word since they headed out.

That itself wasn't strange. Jason loved the city as much as any Titan, but sometimes the crowds got too much for him. He'd go on week-long scouting expeditions, alone or with only Charis for company. Reina hadn't been terribly surprised when he joined her and Isolde. Nor when he'd been silent at first.

But he'd never been silent this _long._

"She's done well," said Reina.

"Yes," said Jason.

Reina waited. And then she asked, quietly, "What do you see?"

Jason had learned the Sunbreakers' art. And he had come back different. Reina did not share his bed like Charis, did not share his class and his power like Madrigal-9. But she could still see the change in him.

He'd told her once about fighting the waves of Vex on Mercury, beneath the looming Sun, in a place that seemed timeless, eternal. She suspected that he had learned there what every Warlock knew: to look into the abyss (whether an abyss of the Light or of the Dark, it hardly mattered) was to be transformed.

Because since he returned—

"Last night," Jason said softly, "I dreamed of the City in flames."

—since then, he had seen visions.

Reina swallowed down her fear. She was fireteam leader. It was her duty to be calm. Discerning.

"Did you see what caused it?" she asked.

Jason shook his head.

"Then there is nothing to do but be ready," she said.

It was dark, but she could hear Jason shifting as he tensed.

"What?" she asked.

". . . It happened during a storm," said Jason. "In my dream."

Far overhead, thunder rumbled. Outside their shelter, rain pattered and slapped against the ground.

Rena sighed, and lowered herself into a trance. Time and place fled away. She felt the piercing, siren gleam of the Traveler, and the dazzle of the Tower beneath it, where a thousand Guardians and their Light were gathered.

(The Darkness out beyond, infinite and expanding. Oryx had been only one of the teeth, not the maw itself.)

Slowly, she came back to herself. Jason's hand was on her head, rumpling her hair.

"They're all right," she told him. "Right now, they're all right."

It was no guarantee of the future. Not the next day, not even the next minute. But Jason seemed to relax a little. He leaned into Reina, as she leaned into him, and she thought that maybe he would sleep tonight.

He did. She did not.

Reina stared into the darkness, into the rain shimmering with lightning bolt after lightning bolt. She remembered the Arc energy coursing through her own Mars, that moment when the whole universe shifted and realigned into a simple equation whose solution was power.

_The storm is raw power. The trance is true understanding._

She remembered the futile anger of the Shattered One, the furious messages that Eris—lips curled—had delivered to her.

_You might have been Kings and Queens of the Deep! But you have toppled Oryx and you have not replaced him!_

She and Eris had mocked those letters together. But Eris was gone now, seeking deeper answers. And Reina, left alone with her power—with the memory of her hands on the sword as she cleaved Crota, her fingers on the sniper as she destroyed Oryx, the storm in every particle of her body as she danced upon Mars—

_A vacancy has opened, hasn’t it?_

_There must be a strongest one. It is the architecture of these spaces._

The storm raged on outside, unabated. Untamed. Unanswered.

_The Stormcaller, then, is both the question and the answer._


End file.
